Passenger Trains > Hawaii trains today

My wife wants to visit Hawaii. I say why, there's no trains there. She gives me a disgusting look. Result, we're going to Hawaii, In any case, what trains are in the Aloha state to ride? If I partake, I will have ridden a train in every state (including SD).

Maybe too late if you did not do a little planning required to pick the correct island. Oahu has the most authentic running on the original rails of the Oahu Railway and a fine museum. Kauai has two reconstructions at Grove Farm where they run steam at least once a month, and the Kauai Plantation Railway at Kilohana Plantation. Use the forum search function over the past year for "Hawaii" and you will find several discussions.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/19/17 19:10 by Railpax71.

At the time I visited in Feb., the only active RR in Hawaii was on Oahu (see link). One in Maui was rumored to be re-starting this year.

http://www.hawaiianrailway.com/

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HART transit is coming.
http://www.honolulutransit.org/

Yeah, visiting family this August; they happen to live in Honolulu.

The Hawaiian Railway Society runs the train out of Ewa, Oahu (it's West of Peal Harbor), Saturdays at 3:00 pm and Sundays at 1:00 pm and 3:00 pm. The three o'clock trips include ice cream. All for $12 ($8 for kids).

There is a lot on exhibit as well, including the "Merci" car that was given to the then Territory of Hawaii and D.C. by France. Hawaii and DC were supposed to share, but it ended up in Ewa. 43 of the original 49 still survive, eight in Railroad Museums.

My family and I spent a little over a week on Kauai last summer, I wrote up a couple posts on what we saw there that can be found in the archives. As noted above, Kauai has two railroad operations, Grove Farms and the Kauai Plantation Railway. Kauai Plantation is a 3-foot gauge line built about ten years ago that runs seven days a week using one of a pair of GE 25-ton diesel electrics, their standard ride is a 40-minute spin around their couple loops of track with a stop at their animal feeding station. I'd highly recommend their lunch and hiking package, you get a walking tour of the grounds, including down into a nearby ravine, followed by a forage into their orchards in addition to the train ride. If you do that I'd highly recommend going early in your stay, as they will let you take at least some produce away with you, and if what you select needs some time to ripen you'll want to allow for that as you can't take it off the island with you. Grove Farms has a few hundred feet of 30-inch gauge track and two steam locomotives, an 0-4-0T and a 0-6-2T, plus two more 0-6-2Ts stored a short distance away from the operating part of their museum. The problem with Grove is they steam up only on the second Thursday of each month, unless you get really lucky and catch a school or some other group as I did. Kauai was the only island we saw (other than the Honolulu airport), so I cannot speak to the others.

One thing I wish I'd done before we went was to study up on the railroad history of the island. Kauai once had around 200 miles of 30-inch gauge track, almost all of it related to the sugar industry. The last of these (Lihue Plantation) shut down in 1959, though the Grove Farms railroad runs on a part of their old grade. There are still quite a few railroad relics that can be found around the island, most of which I missed because I didn't know about them before we went. I became fascinated with the history while we were there and bought copies of several of the Hawaiian railroad books after we returned, Jesse C. Conde's Sugar Trains and Sugar Trains Pictoral are fascinating books, as are the Hawaiian Railway Album- World War II books.

Enjoy your trip. I know I sure want to go back as soon as we can make it feasible again...

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV

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Clearly not in the same league, but on the Big Island/Kona Coast, the Hilton has a modern "train" of sorts that travels between different buildings. It is closer to an airport shuttle than a true train.